Opening yourself up to
love is opening yourself up. That's where the difficulties start; when you
reduce the
barrier between yourself and someone else, you increase the impact that that person can have on you personally. People who are normally
unwounded by insults can be damaged by the
accidental insults of the person they love, even if the point were not to be damaging. The
crux of the matter is that you must take the good with the bad; being
sensitive to someone is not limited to being positively
sensitive to them.
And perhaps this is not so bad, anyway. You have to have bad to contrast to the good, or the good goes unappreciated. Ideally, when two people truly love each other, the pain one suffers harms the other indirectly; being more sensitive to one another results in both taking more care with each other, thereby subtly improving the quality of life of both. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't restricted only to people in a sexual relationship (though the bond is invariably stronger in those cases); any relationship between two (or more) people in which the closeness is real, so will the vulnerability therein be.
If, theoretically, one were to surround one's self with people whom one loves and who love one, one's life would become that much more beautiful. But it follows that one has to release one's vulnerabilities to those people, or the relationship will not become as close as it could be. So perhaps part of living a more beautiful life involves giving love every bit as much as receiving it.